As this is being posted, the last sessions are ending here at Google I/O 2012 in San Francisco. This year's event was our biggest and most amazing yet, with software and hardware launches, dozens of technical sessions and code labs, and an already legendary demo that required permission from the Federal Aviation Administration. We shared all this with more than 5500 developer attendees in person, and with millions more in 172 countries around the world via I/O Live and I/O Extended.

We announced a lot of information, so it’s understandable if you missed some of it. Here are just a few of the highlights:

Nexus 7, the first tablet from Google, and Nexus Q, the first social streaming media player.

We are very excited to welcome more than 5,000 developers to Google I/O this week. As we celebrate new product launches, and share knowledge during sessions, codelabs, Sandbox demos and office hours, we don't want to be limited to exchanging information with our developers only three days a year. In this spirit, we took the first step last week, launching Google Developers Live, a place for developers to connect face-to-face with Google engineers as well as each other in a live setting. However, real-time is not always the most convenient, so to address this, we’re announcing two more programs: Google Developers Academy and Google Developers University Consortium.

Google Developers Academy is a new program that provides training materials on Google technologies. Developers will learn and solidify their skills on many of our developer tools and APIs. We've launched with courses covering a variety of services like Google App Engine, Google Drive, YouTube, and our many advertising APIs. This is just the start, as we'll add new lessons regularly.

Google Developers University Consortium is a collaborative community of academics who use Google's tools and developer platforms for instruction and research. We are providing teachers and researchers with a platform to share their materials and communicate freely with other faculty worldwide. This is a great place for the academic community to make announcements about their work, highlight successes, publish research, exchange content, and share their enthusiasm and knowledge with each other.

By providing more learning tools and interaction platforms for the global community, we are building and enhancing the skill set of today's and tomorrow's Google developers and helping them build the next generation of awesome apps!

If you're attending Google I/O, please stop by our booth in the Google TV lounge right across from the GDG Tattoo table.

Wesley Chun is author of the bestselling Core Python books and Developer Advocate at Google, specializing in cloud computing & academia. He has over two decades of programming, teaching & writing experience, and was one of the original Yahoo!Mail engineers. Wesley loves traveling worldwide to meet Google developers; follow him on Google+ and Twitter.

Over the years, Google has built some of the most high performing, scalable and efficient data centers in the world by constantly refining our hardware and software. Since 2008, we've been working to open up our infrastructure to outside developers and businesses so they can take advantage of our cloud as they build applications and websites and store and analyze data. So far this includes products like Google App Engine, Google Cloud Storage, and Google BigQuery.

Today, in response to many requests from developers and businesses, we're going a step further. We're introducing Google Compute Engine, an Infrastructure-as-a-Service product that lets you run Linux Virtual Machines (VMs) on the same infrastructure that powers Google. This goes beyond just giving you greater flexibility and control; access to computing resources at this scale can fundamentally change the way you think about tackling a problem.

Google Compute Engine offers:

Scale. At Google we tackle huge computing tasks all the time, like indexing the web, or handling billions of search queries a day. Using Google's data centers, Google Compute Engine reduces the time to scale up for tasks that require large amounts of computing power. You can launch enormous compute clusters - tens of thousands of cores or more.

Performance. Many of you have learned to live with erratic performance in the cloud. We have built our systems to offer strong and consistent performance even at massive scale. For example, we have sophisticated network connections that ensure consistency. Even in a shared cloud you don’t see interruptions; you can tune your app and rely on it not degrading.

Value. Computing in the cloud is getting even more appealing from a cost perspective. The economy of scale and efficiency of our data centers allows Google Compute Engine to give you 50% more compute for your money than with other leading cloud providers. You can see pricing details here.

Network. Connect your VMs together using our high-performance network technology to form powerful compute clusters and manage connectivity to the Internet with configurable firewalls.

Tooling. Configure and control your VMs via a scriptable command line tool or web UI. Or you can create your own dynamic management system using our API.

At launch, we have worked with a number of partners - such as RightScale, Puppet Labs, OpsCode, Numerate, Cliqr and MapR - to integrate their products with Google Compute Engine. These partners offer management services that make it easy for you to move your applications to the cloud and between different cloud environments.

You can learn more about Google Compute Engine here. We’re going to pace ourselves and start with Google Compute Engine in limited preview (sign up here), but our goal is to give you all the pieces you need to build anything you want in the cloud. Whether you need a platform like Google App Engine, or virtual machines like Google Compute Engine, these days, you define your limits. We’re just at the start of what the cloud can do.

Craig McLuckie is the Product Management Lead for Google Compute Engine. He spends his days working with an amazing engineering team to open Google’s infrastructure to the world.

Today at Google I/O, we announced many enhancements to Google Apps Script to help you build richer applications and share your apps with users. Apps Script began as a tool for helping users get more done with their Google spreadsheets. Over time, Apps Script has grown to handle much more. It's a platform to extend Google spreadsheets and Sites, and a convenient way to create web applications.

We launched script.google.com as a destination for Apps Script developers. You can now create scripts from script.google.com or from Google Drive. Plus, your projects are now stored in Google Drive, and you can share them just like a Google document or spreadsheet.

HtmlService can help you create beautiful interfaces using Apps Script. HtmlService allows you to create web apps using HTML, client-side JavaScript, and CSS. You can also use jQuery to build web apps. HtmlService uses Google Caja to ensure that the HTML content served by your web apps is saferfor you and your users.

We also launched a better way to store your application's data, ScriptDb. Every script now has an embedded JSON database. You no longer have to rely on a spreadsheet to store the data. Using ScriptDb, you can store a larger volume of data and search easily. We designed ScriptDb to be easy to use. It doesn't need connection strings or special passwords, and you can directly store and search your JavaScript objects without the need to convert them to a different format. You can learn more about ScriptDb on the Google Apps Script Developers page.

There are also now more options for deploying your web app. Your apps can now, with authorization, run as the user behind the keyboard, not just the script owner. This brings a new level of versatility to web apps built with Apps Script.

Finally, we wanted to make it easy to distribute your apps. You can nowpublish your apps in the Chrome Web Store. Register and package your app directly from the Publish menu in Google Apps Script. Then customize your listing from the Chrome Web Store and publish your app to the world.

by Mike Procopio, Software Engineer, on behalf of the Google Drive SDK team

In April, we announced the first version of the Google Drive SDK along with a range of Drive apps. Built using the SDK, these apps bring life to the files people store in Google Drive. Today at Google I/O, we're announcing the next version of the Google Drive SDK with a number of updates including an expanded API, a simplified developer experience and mobile app support.

The new Drive API exposes all standard file operations as well as methods to list and search files, convert between formats, copy files, manage revisions, and share files with users. The API is based on open standards, including a RESTful service architecture, JSON data exchange format, and OAuth2 for authorization. And with a simplified design and drop-in client libraries available in eight languages, using the API has never been easier.

Users want to access their files in Drive from anywhere. Today, we're announcing full mobile support for Android and iOS apps using the Drive SDK. Mobile apps can securely use the Drive API to read and write files directly to Google Drive. Users can also "Open with" on mobile devices to view or edit content from their phone or tablet just like they do on the web. (Installation of apps via the Chrome Web Store is no longer required.)

We also introduced several new features for Drive apps for the web. Google Drive makes it easy to share files, and we’re bringing sharing to your apps with the familiar Drive sharing box. With just a few lines of JavaScript added to your app, users can share their files with the new embeddable sharing component. Also, users can now open Google document formats in any app that supports one of the many export formats available. For example, an app that faxes PDFs can now fax a Google document, spreadsheet, or presentation directly.

Finally, there are a handful of great new Drive apps that will soon join the many apps already available today. These new apps range from mobile photo editors for cropping photos on your phone to a web-based IDE for slingin' code in the cloud.

Want to make your application work with Google Drive? Full documentation on the Google Drive SDK is available at developers.google.com/drive, or if you're itching to start building, head to our Getting Started guide. Our team is on Stack Overflow to answer any questions you have when integrating your app with Google Drive.

Mike Procopio is a Software Engineer for Google Drive, focusing on all things Drive apps. He gets to leverage his passion for the developer and user experience by working on the next-generation APIs that help unleash Google Drive. Before joining Google in 2010, he was a machine learning researcher, and enjoys engaging in illuminating statistical discussions at every opportunity.

At Google we want the whole web to be faster. We've built a fast browser, improved image encodings, developed better network protocols, and provided PageSpeed tools and optimization libraries. In November 2010, we launched mod_pagespeed, an open-source Apache module that speeds up web sites by rewriting HTML, JavaScript, CSS and images to reduce size, eliminate HTTP requests, and improve browser performance.

mod_pagespeed adoption is growing rapidly. Now EdgeCast Networks, one of the world’s largest CDN operators, has integrated mod_pagespeed into the core of its content delivery network and is making it available as an option in its Application Delivery Network (ADN) service offering.

Hayes Kim, EdgeCast Senior Product Manager, had this to say: "Edgecast has integrated mod_pagespeed alongside our HTTP engine and deployed this to our ADN edge locations worldwide. Our solution enables optimizations in real-time and local to the end user, leveraging the full compute capacity of our edge nodes. We leverage the local edge caches for the unoptimized resources and then cache the subsequent optimized resources processed by mod_pagespeed. EdgeCast's integration can speed up millions of websites either served directly by EdgeCast or indirectly through hosting providers using our technology."

Hayes says that early results show up to a 77% pageview performance improvement when leveraging the ADN service with mod_pagespeed, and a 33% performance improvement from mod_pagespeed alone.

Gogotech, an e-commerce solution provider, has been evaluating EdgeCast's ADN and edge optimizer services, with promising results so far. "This solution looks to be a strong contender for further improving our offerings to Gogotech clients, and we are looking forward to seeing it develop," said Alex Bolduc, IT Director at Gogotech.

The following images and this video show how mod_pagespeed and EdgeCast's ADN are speeding up a Gogotech site.

You can find more details about EdgeCast's mod_pagespeed integrated offerings here. And you can find information on Google’s PageSpeed technologies and tools here.

Joshua Marantz is a Software Engineer on Google’s Pagespeed Automatic team in Cambridge, MA, which is dedicated to making the web faster for everyone. Josh has been working on making software run fast for several decades, at Google and before that on accelerated chip simulation.

Hayes Kim has over eleven years of product development and leadership experience in online advertising, e-commerce, web acceleration, and social media. At EdgeCast, Hayes manages the development of the core HTTP technology that powers the CDN and Application Delivery Network.

Google I/O, our annual developer conference, begins in just two days, and this year, we’re bringing you more than 130 technical sessions, 20 code labs and 155 Sandbox partners. If you’re not here in San Francisco, you can still sign up for one of our 350+ I/O Extended events around the world or tune in to I/O Live to watch the live stream from wherever you are. This year’s conference kicks off on June 27 with the first day’s keynote at 9:30 a.m. PDT and the second day’s keynote on June 28 at 10:00 a.m. PDT, so tune in early at developers.google.com/io to avoid missing the action!

Bookmark developers.google.com/io to watch I/O Live from your desktop, or download the Google I/O mobile app to access the live stream from your phone or tablet. For the truly entrepreneurial, check our liveblogging gadget, which lets you add your commentary and the live video feed from the Google I/O keynotes to your blog.

More than 40 sessions on Android, Chrome, Google+ and your favorite APIs will be streamed live with captions, and all remaining session videos will be recorded and available shortly after the conference on Google Developers Live and the conference website. Between sessions, we’ll bring you behind-the-scenes footage featuring interviews with Googlers and attendees, tours of the Sandbox and more. The stream will also continue through our After Hours party (June 27 starting at 7:00 p.m. PDT), where we've teamed up with top entertainers, inventors, artists, educators and visionaries from all over the world for an amazing evening.

Mike Winton founded and leads Google's global Developer Relations organization. He also enjoys spending time with his family and DJing electronic music.

The Endangered Languages Project provides a place online for research, documents, and even recordings of people speaking endangered languages. You can read more here about this incredibly cool and human use of the web.

While we're working on preserving languages, it's also important to create bridges between languages, as Google Translate does. A group of students at the University of Houston recently worked on a device that aims to translate between sign language and spoken English. The team created a prototype that reads sign language and outputs audible words, then reverses the process by listening for spoken words and showing sign language on a display.

Each week we publish Fridaygram, featuring cool things from Google and elsewhere that you might have missed during the week. Fridaygram items aren't necessarily related to developer topics; they're just interesting to us nerds. Speaking of languages, do you think COBOL should be preserved?

Google I/O 2012 is fast approaching, and to help energize you for three packed days of demos, announcements and developer fun, we chatted with a few attendees to see what excites them about this year’s agenda, and to get some tips on how to make the most of the event.

Today’s conversation is with Vincent Nguyen. Vincent is co-founder of Android Community and SlashGear, where he writes about mobile technology and consumer electronics. We asked Vincent for a look at what he expects during his I/O 2012 experience.

You’ve been to Google I/O before. How are you approaching this year’s event?
I've been attending Google I/O since the very first year back in 2008, and watched as the event has matured into a showcase for everything that we love about Google. Far-fetched ideas that somehow find their way into phones; ambitious plans to help users engage with data in new and intriguing ways; and a combination of enterprise and geeky glee that permeates all the way through, whether you're talking to a Google exec or a developer attendee.

We'll be covering I/O wearing two different hats, which is fitting considering Android has broken through into the mainstream as well as remaining a developer's playground. For SlashGear, we'll take a more consumer-centric approach: looking at the technologies and developments that will make a day-to-day difference in users' lives. It's really easy to put together a slick demo and presentation, but we'll be trying to make sure the SlashGear audience sees the context too, where they'll actually benefit once that technology reaches the market.

On the flipside there's the Android Community readership, which tends to be more advanced in its understanding of hardware, code and apps, as well as eager and willing to dig into the minutiae of what makes Google I/O special. There, we'll spend less time on context - though that's still important - and more on specifics, keeping readers up to speed on the cutting edge.

Android has become a huge part of I/O. What do you foresee happening with Android at this year’s conference?
Android's rise has been meteoric, and apps have grown in number and scope alongside it. Many Google I/O sessions will center on app accessibility, security and privacy, all hot-button topics in the months since last year's event. One of the great strengths of the platform is the freedom developers have to distribute their software, but with that comes no small amount of responsibility, and I'm expecting to hear more best-practice guidelines as Google shifts into broader areas.

That's where arguably the real meat of Google I/O comes about: the opportunity for developers to talk to Google's own engineers. As press attendees rather than as developers, the team and I are always mindful of the huge number of interested people who haven't been able to make it to I/O itself. We're their eyes and ears in the keynote, the backstage interviews, when talking with Sandbox partners and everywhere else. It's a big responsibility but I love the challenge of spotting the most important trends and stories and packaging them up in a way that makes sense to those not lucky enough to be on-site.

Is there anything you’re hoping to learn about that isn’t a major part of the current schedule?
Google has some challenges ahead, and like many I'll be very interested to see the latest developments in Google TV. I'm hoping the multi-screen strategy we've seen developing from other companies in home entertainment and gaming will find a counterpart in Google's platform, pulling the disparate elements of the cloud, smart mobility and entertainment together.

It's the surprise additions - the keynote items we never expect - that I'm most excited about, though. I'd be shocked if Google didn't bring the latest iteration of Project Glass on-stage, and disappointed if I don't get to try it myself sometime during I/O. I expect some talk about what Google has learned in wearable computing. After long speculation about Google Assistant, and with Samsung's S-Voice making its debut on the Galaxy S III recently, I'm also guessing that voice control will make itself heard too.

As a veteran of 4 previous Google I/O events, how are you feeling about this year’s I/O?
Ultimately, we want Google I/O to be a fun experience, and help convey that excitement and enthusiasm to our readers, developers and others through our coverage of the event. It's a huge, valuable opportunity for insight into one of the most important companies around today; a starting point for ripples that we'll see impact the tech world across the following months. It's a privilege to be involved, and I can't wait to be wowed.

Not coming to Google I/O 2012 in person? Not a problem. Watch the keynote and dozens of other sessions streamed live at developers.google.com/io.

Vincent Nguyen began his career in tech more than a decade ago as a provisioning manager and software developer. As the co-founder of Android Community and SlashGear, he specializes in mobile technology, and also writes about all aspects of consumer electronics with an independent perspective. You can follow Vincent on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.

Google I/O 2012 is fast approaching, and to help energize you for three packed days of demos, announcements and developer fun, we chatted with a few attendees to see what excites them about this year’s agenda, and to get some tips on how to make the most of the event.

Today’s conversation is with 15-year-old Will Smidlein, one of the youngest I/O attendees. Will began developing at the age of 10, after checking out Teach Yourself Visually Html and Css from the local library to find out how websites work. By 13 he was teaching himself PHP to make his websites functional, as well as convincing his parents to take their next vacation in San Francisco so he could attend Google I/O. Will has developed everything from a web-based podcast client, to a JQuery script that uses the HTML5 Audio tag to run a function at a certain timecode, to creating an alarm clock that uses data from the web, such as Google Calendar, traffic, and weather information, to wake you up. This will be Will's third I/O, and he's most excited to meet with and get advice from other developers. Here’s what Will had to say:

Why is it important to you to attend Google I/O?
Google I/O always has been, and will be, a must attend for me. While flying both my father and myself from Cleveland and staying in a hotel for the length of the conference isn't exactly cheap, I wouldn't have it any other way. The people attending I/O are some of the most skilled developers in every field, and just being in the same room improves your knowledge. After almost every session I attend, I think to myself "wow, a side of a programming language was just explained to me by the person who created that language".

On a technical level, I've always been a web guy, so HTML5 is a big thing for me. I love the demos that Google puts together and the sessions from the experts about new web technologies and how to integrate them in actual applications. Having the Chrome team there is huge because you can talk with the developers of one of the most popular browsers in the world about new specs and ideas.

What do you hope to experience at Google I/O 2012? What themes or technologies will you be watching for?
One of the biggest reasons for me to attend I/O is to meet other developers, see what they're up to, and get advice. I love connecting actual faces to the IRC, GitHub, and Twitter usernames I interact with every day. I also love going to sessions that don't necessarily apply to what I do in case I need what I learn later. Just because I don't program for Android professionally now doesn't mean I won't at some point, or it won't be useful to me. Every I/O track is like its own conference, so by attending I/O, you don’t just interact with people or topics in your line of work, you're able to explore and diversify.

For people coming to Google I/O, what are your tips for making the most of the event?
Take the time to meet people. Everyone is extremely friendly, and even if they don't program in the same language as you, you'll have a blast talking to them. Go to the Sandbox presenters and see what they're showing off. Ask the session speakers any questions you have.

Also, use it as a chance to try new things. For example, before my first I/O, I had never seriously programmed with Java, but on the plane ride home from that event, I wrote my first Android app and have fallen in love with the language since. After last year's Chromebook giveaway, I challenged myself to write a web-based media center that could be controlled by my phone.

If you could send a message out to other young developers, what would you tell them?
Take this time to learn all that you can about programming. Don't pressure yourself with building a portfolio, or working for a startup, or getting to the top of Hacker News. Learn from open source, and make connections in the tech world so that when you do need to make money, you've got a 5 year head start on the competition.

Not coming to Google I/O 2012 in person? Not a problem. Watch the keynote and dozens of other sessions streamed live at developers.google.com/io.

Will Smidlein is a 15-year-old web fanatic who jumps from project to project learning new things and technologies along the way. You can follow Will during Google I/O at @WS.

Google I/O 2012 is fast approaching, and to help energize you for three packed days of demos, announcements and developer fun, we chatted with a few attendees to see what excites them about this year’s agenda, and to get some tips on how to make the most of the event.

Today’s conversation is with Nils Hitze, the founder and leader of GTUG Munich, and organizer of this year’s I/O Extended event in Munich. Nils attended Google I/O in 2011. With the upcoming arrival of his fifth child, he’ll be attending the 2012 event from afar, and in the process offering a customized, community-oriented experience to local developers, complete with a BarCamp, Android Hackathon, and perhaps some beer! We asked Nils about the value of I/O Extended events, and what Munich’s attendees in particular can look forward to. Here’s what Nils had to say:

Why is it important to you to host I/O Extended?
I enjoy organizing events for people who are eager to learn. Plus, people think better and work better and are more creative when they are together in a room with fellow nerds (and maybe pizza, some beer, some Jolt Cola).

What's on the agenda for I/O Extended Munich?
In Munich we will cover days one and two of Google I/O. We will let people decide for themselves which sessions they want to watch. Usually it comes down to HTML5 and Android.

We add value to the public viewing by holding a BarCamp on Day 1 and an Android Hackathon on Day 2. The BarCamp is something I've done so often that I simply know it works. Bring together people that are passionate, give them a session plan and let them talk about the things they love. Of course we will have some limiting focus so we don't get "introduction to coffee roasting" as a session. Although that might be interesting too.

The Android Hackathon decision was based on the never-ending demand for Android Hacks/App/Developers and more.

What are you personally hoping to hear about this year?
Personally I want to learn more about ADK and Project Glass.

ADK, or more specifically Arduino, is such a cool project that I come across all the time. Either in QuadCopters, 3D printers, home automation - everywhere I look, Arduino is already there.

Project Glass, oh this is the easiest question to answer. It is the next level of UI and I need my hands free while cycling or when I play with my kids but I don't want to be disconnected from the Web. Plus one million cool things I could think of that would make life better/easier.

What's unique about I/O Extended Munich?
It is public viewing for nerds that is following the trend of public viewing for sports events. Also, maybe our beer steins...oh I already told too much.

You've got another big life event right around I/O Extended. Why is it so important to you to attend I/O or an I/O Extended event?
For one, in comparison to any other tech conference I’ve attended, it's bigger. Skyscraper vs house bigger. And the amount of smart people that attend is incredible. Have I mentioned the cool robot stuff that I saw? No? That stuff was epic. Plus, I’ve never seen a party like this before.

Where on earth can you meet the guy who invented Hashtags & BarCamps? Yes, Chris Messina, I am looking at you.

Not coming to Google I/O 2012 in person? Not a problem. Watch the keynote and dozens of other sessions streamed live at developers.google.com/io.

Nils Hitze is a Lvl 50 Nerd Dad of four (almost five) kids and founder of the GTUG Munich, Germany's second GTUG. In his free time he is saving the world by evangelizing 3D printing, helping open source projects, translating MMOGs and organizing BarCamps/CloudCamps/GameCamps & TechTalks. He has a serious LEGO Problem which he doen’t want to get rid of. You can follow Nils at I/O Extended Munich at @kojote and gplus.to/gtugmunich.

by Aygul Zagidullina and
Misha Matiyenko-Kupriyanov, with Domenica Liberti, Google I/O Team

Google I/O 2012 is fast approaching, and to help energize you for three packed days of demos, announcements and developer fun, we chatted with a few attendees to see what excites them about this year’s agenda, and to get some tips on how to make the most of the event.

Today's conversation is with two passionate GDG leaders, Aygul and Misha, who spent part of their honeymoon at Google I/O last year! Aygul Zagidullina is a research scientist at the University of Stuttgart and Misha Matiyenko-Kupriyanov works as a web developer at Deutsche Online Medien GmbH. Their life together is documented and searchable on Google. They share their thoughts and web gems on Google+, plan trips across Europe and the US with Google Maps, check in on each other with Google Latitude, and live in the clouds with their Android devices. We would like to share with you their love story and how they are planning on making the most of 3 days of Google I/O 2012.

How did the two of you meet?
Our story began with a casual conversation in LiveJournal that we quickly outgrew and moved to Google Talk to keep up with each other by relying heavily on daily chat communication. We very quickly discovered how many similar interests and thoughts on a wide variety of topics we have. Within a month, we decided to have our first trip to Düsseldorf for Japan Day and started our shared Google Calendar and collaborative Google Docs to plan our activities and collect ideas of what we would like to do together.

In 2010 we both attended German GDG Battle organized by GDG Stuttgart . The team we both were part of got Nexus One smartphones as the first prize. At this event we fell in love with the GDG concept and became later on a part of the organizing team. It has been two exciting years now since we've joined the GDG Stuttgart's organizing team, two years full of planning and execution of public events such as Android DevCamp Stuttgart, tech talks, hackathons and many other local events on Google technologies as well as communication with local developers online via discussion boards and Google+.

Years later we are incredibly happy together, and are excited about our future. Today we can't even imagine how our life would be without technology.

Why did you choose Google I/O for your honeymoon last year?
We wanted our wedding and honeymoon to be perfect in all senses, memorable, breathtaking, and pleasantly useful! Getting married in Las Vegas and spending the honeymoon at our very first Google I/O - we could not have imagined celebrating the start of our new life together any other way. Today, one year later we are looking back and can't be happier about how right this decision was.

What’s the best memory you will always keep with you about being at Google I/O as newlyweds?
Two of our most memorable moments were definitely the keynotes on the first and second days. You had to see us, happy to tears, literally screaming with all other people in the room after each groundbreaking announcement. The feeling that technology revolution happens right here, right now is nothing but priceless!

Another amazing experience we will always keep in our hearts was meeting our international GDG community. We were extremely happy to finally put faces on the name of many GDG managers we were working with to build our community. Google gave us plenty of opportunities for communication, experience exchange and fruitful networking with members of the GDG community such as the Advocates Summit (with Vic Gundotra and Developer Relations team), GDG lounge, and a visit to the Googleplex (as a part of self-organized Silicon Valley Geek Tour).

Why is attending Google I/O important to what you do?Aygul: I am primarily interested in fostering European (both West and East) developer communities. Being an enthusiastic co-organizer of two Google Developer Groups (GDGs) in Stuttgart, Germany and Ufa, Russia, I love engaging with local developers to help them be successful building products using Google technologies. Besides, I'm also a happy and proud Google Top Contributor (TC) at the Google+, Gmail, Google Web Search and several other product forums (English, German, and Russian) and am doing my best to help users on a daily basis to learn how to use Google products better and troubleshoot their issues. With such a broad network, many of whom cannot be at I/O in person, I am excited to take what I learn and share it with my fellow GDGers.

Misha: As a passionate web developer, I am mostly interested in web-related technologies like HTML5, Google Chrome as development tool, Google Chrome extensions, Google App Engine and the knowhow of Google APIs. Also, my skills in developing Android applications is something I would definitely like to boost. I am sure these new technologies will bring new boost to my mojo and attending I/O will inspire me to start new projects like the ones I've worked on recently, the Google Developer Day Android application, the FontVending Android application and the Helper for Google+ Chrome extension.

Tell us your plans for Google I/O this year.Aygul: The day before we are planning to participate in the GDG Organizers Summit to meet GDG managers from around the world and discuss all together how we can take our community to the next level.

Besides Sessions and Code Labs, I'm really excited to see so many excellent products will be presented at Sandbox this year. As a true productivity junkie, I can’t wait to talk to creators of GQueues in person.

Misha: Every year Google presents at Google I/O some new pieces of technology that may form the future landscape of the web. I will make sure to learn about all the announcements on Google+ API, Google App Engine, Dart, Chrome tooling, Google Cloud Printing, and Google Drive API.

Google I/O 2012 is fast approaching, and to help energize you for three packed days of demos, announcements and developer fun, we chatted with a few attendees to see what excites them about this year's agenda, and to get some tips on how to make the most of the event.

For today's post we talked with 3 developers about how they use Google technologies and how Google I/O helps them learn and code.

What do you do and what’s your general approach to Google I/O?
My job is to help our engineers get things done, and to grow AwayFind's user base. Google I/O for me is a chance to meet with Googlers and independent software vendors that are pushing the limits of the technologies we work with, mainly Gmail and Google Apps. The people I’ve met at Google I/O in years past have helped my team on both technical and business issues.

What Google technologies do you use in your products?
AwayFind delivers mobile alerts for priority emails. That means we use:

OAuth for single sign-on via Google accounts and to connect to our users' Gmail and Google Calendar data.

What are the most valuable parts of Google I/O for you? Any advice for new attendees?
It's the unique group of people that make the difference for me at Google I/O. While there will be specific events I'll attend like Wednesday’s "Android Apps in Google Play" and Friday's "Designing for the Other Half," it's the Office Hours and the Sandbox that really excite me.

For anyone who will be attending for the first time, I recommend highlighting the talks or labs that you really want to attend (last year’s Android app was a big help for this). But even more importantly, be sure to list out the questions you really need answered and the people you'd really like to meet.

How is Google I/O different from other conferences you attend?
Google I/O attendees know how to work with the Google ecosystem to build products and businesses. For 3 days this summer, I'll be surrounded by experts and I can ask tough questions of people who have real experience. No other conference offers such a deep dive into the world where my team and my customers spend most of their days.

And it's fun. The afterparty is a chance to be a happy geek. The keynote is energetic. And everyone seems to be in a good mood with free food (and plenty of candy).

Have you been to Google I/O before? What’s your overall perspective on this year’s event?
Not only is this my first Google I/O, I'm a bit of an outsider in the web dev world — I was in database systems and video-processing software until recently. So from that perspective I often find myself asking questions like this:

If we can create brilliant technology that allows me to use my phone to take HD video of a cat and share it with a billion people online, why do small business owners still have to burn a quarter of their time doing administrative tasks instead of, you know, running the business?

What are you hoping to learn at I/O?
I'll be at the Google Drive SDK session to see how Wave can use Google Drive to enable easier collaboration between our customers and their accountants — specifically, the ability to share receipts, tax documents, and so on.

At Wave we're currently exploring how to separate the permissions for our various services, so I’ll be at the OAuth session, too. Specifically, I’m looking forward to Python samples for managing user identity and data access within an application.

And as a relative newcomer in the web world, the session about visual design is going to be awesome for me. I haven’t had much design experience before Wave, and though we have great UI/UX people who do most of that work, I still often work very directly on user-facing parts of our application, so I expect to learn a lot from the visual design pros.

At Wave we’re already taking advantage of Google OpenID, and ourapps are on the Chrome Web Store and the Google Apps Marketplace. But my marketing colleagues at Wave have me on the lookout for new ways of leveraging the Google ecosystem to drive traffic.

And I'll be absorbing as much Android know-how as possible. Our mobile apps are in progress.

It sounds like you’re very business-focused, but please don’t forget to have fun at I/O too.
Absolutely! I've heard great things about the camaraderie at I/O, and the events from last year look like a blast. I'm looking forward to some fun as well as the mental challenges.

Tell us what you do and which technologies you use.
I am the VP of Engineering of just.me, a mobile startup in the social space. At just.me we are building iPhone, Android, HTML5 Mobile, and HTML5 Web applications. At just.me I code on the Android app, the server-side SpringMVC, and a bit on the HTML5. I/O is great because it has great coverage of modern development tools.

I am also the leader of the Silicon Valley Google Technology User Group. I find I/O a great place to get a preview of what possible topics I may want to have throughout the year. If you enjoy I/O, but want to learn more and meet with developers from your community I recommend looking at https://developers.google.com/groups/ to find a local group. If you don’t find a local group you can always start one yourself.

What are you looking forward to most at I/O?
I am most excited about the Android sessions. I'd love to start leveraging all of the ICS features in the just.me app. I will also squeeze in some Google Maps sessions. I seem to find myself using Google Maps on some project every year, so I like keeping up-to-date with Maps.

I also enjoy attending hands-on sessions at I/O. Historically Bootcamp has been my favorite part of I/O. I love sitting in a 1-2 hour session and learning the basics of something I have never done before. The Code Labs this year look great.

As a Google I/O veteran, tell us what it feels like to attend I/O.
I/O has great energy, because it brings developers from all backgrounds. Most conferences I attend, all developers are from very similar backgrounds. I really enjoy the hallway and lunchtime conversations with developers of diverse backgrounds.

I/O also pulls together experts from many different areas. I think the speaker quality at I/O is better than other conferences. Many of the speakers are on the core development teams of the products and others are directly involved in specs.

You're active in the developer community. How does I/O help with that?
I lead the Silicon Valley Google Technology User Group. I/O is the place to meet group leaders from around the world. The group lounge is a great place to relax and meet other developers.

Not coming to Google I/O 2012 in person? Not a problem. Watch the keynote and dozens of other sessions streamed live at developers.google.com/io.

Jared Goralnick is Founder at AwayFind, where he helps people to stop checking their email. You can also find him mentoring at 500 Startups, hosting the Inbox Love conference, and tripping over his own feet on the swing dance floor. Follow Jared at @technotheory.

Marcin Kwietniewski is a Software Engineer (Python/Django) at Wave Accounting. In addition to his new adventures in web development, he's traded in spare time pursuits like puzzles, sci-fi novels and ballroom dancing in favor of his beautiful 16-month-old daughter. Follow Marcin at @marcin_kw.

We think of Google I/O as a place where our technologies come to life. Over the course of our three-day conference next week, you will see new technologies demoed for the first time, learn from the Googlers behind the code and meet with Sandbox partners who’ve built businesses using our APIs. And while I/O Live makes Google I/O accessible to every single developer around the world, we want to bring you knowledge, tools, and people from the Google Developers community, all year round–not just three days in June.

We think connecting you with Google's experts and your fellow developers can inspire incredible app creation. So today, we're introducing Google Developers Live, a destination for developers around the world that will feature live, interactive broadcasts ranging from developer-focused game shows to Office Hours where you can connect with the engineers who created and work on your favorite Google product.

Google Developers Live allows us to bring you the excitement of Google I/O year-round, beginning today with the release of starter-level sessions on everything from Android to YouTube, to help prepare you for the more advanced content that will be presented next week. And, if you have any questions after watching these tutorials, we've set up Office Hours with each of our presenters on Google Developers Live so you can ask them directly.

Last November, we launched the OAuth 2.0 Playground, a tool enabling you to easily experiment with the OAuth 2.0 protocol and APIs that use the protocol. We recently added a convenient way for you to test the newly launched Google Drive API by allowing you to open Drive files with the OAuth 2.0 Playground along with extending the capabilities of the Playground to support file upload and multipart requests.

The Drive API uses a per-file security model. When using the https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file scope you will only be able to access the files that your app has created or that were opened through the Google Drive interface with your app. This made it impossible to read any existing Drive files using the OAuth 2.0 Playground by simply authorizing the Drive scope. To make this possible we are providing a way to open files from the Drive UI with the OAuth 2.0 Playground. All you need to do is add the OAuth 2.0 Playground application to Google Drive.

OAuth 2.0 Playground as a Drive app on the Chrome Web Store

To allow you to experiment with the Drive-initiated OAuth 2.0 flow and open existing Drive files using the API we've made the OAuth 2.0 Playground installable as a Drive app from the Chrome Web Store.

OAuth 2.0 Playground listing on the Chrome Web Store

After installing the OAuth 2.0 Playground you will be able to open files directly from Drive using the OAuth 2.0 Playground by simply right clicking on a file in Drive > Open with > OAuth 2.0 Playground.

Right click on a file in Drive > Open with > OAuth 2.0 Playground

This makes sure the Playground is granted access to the file and then redirects the user to the Playground after initiating an OAuth flow. The Playground will have the auth code and the file metadata URL pre-filled so you'll then be able to conveniently finish the OAuth flow and fetch the file's metadata.

This allows you, for instance, to create new files on Drive with one single request to the Drive API file upload endpoint by sending both the metadata of the file and the file’s content.

We hope the OAuth 2.0 Playground Drive application and the new file upload features will help you during the development of Drive-enabled web applications. If you have any questions regarding the Drive API don’t hesitate to ask us on Stack Overflow and if you’d like to reach out to the OAuth 2.0 Playground team please do so on our Google Group.

Nicolas Garnier joined Google’s Developer Relations in 2008 and lives in Zurich. He is a Developer Advocate focusing on Google Apps and Web APIs. Before joining Google, Nicolas worked at Airbus and at the French Space Agency where he built web applications for scientific researchers.